Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Runs like these were rough on Piper, Rico knew. She couldn't concentrate only on the matrix. She had to deal with the meat world, too. Security setups, progress of the penetration, coordinate things. Make sure the right elevator was at the right floor at just the right time. Give Thorvin a go, not early, not late, so the chopper and the ride home would be exposed for the least amount of time possible. It was a lot to deal with. A lot of pressure. Probably the worst of it was that no one, least of all Rico, could really know just what she went through, because when she went into the matrix, she went alone.

It humbled him. It made him feel like his skills and abilities weren't really any big deal. Most men were made to fight, to face pressure, conflict. They were born that way. But for a woman to go. through what Piper did… that was something special.

"We did good," she said softly.

"So far," Rico agreed.

"The kami were with us."

"It ain't over yet."

"What's bothering you, my love?"

"I don't' know." Rico felt restless, uneasy. Instinct said the run had gone too smoothly. No one had gotten as much as a scratch. That rarely happened. The price of a run against a major corp could usually be measured in blood. Had they simply been lucky? Was some surprise still to come? Something that would make up for the easy way things had gone so far…

His brain kept reminding him about the team and the plan. The team was experienced and the plan had been a good one, worked out in detail. There had been plenty of weaknesses in the Maas Intertech facility, and the plan had exploited them. On that basis alone, the run should have gone smoothly.

"I don't think I'm gonna sleep till we get rid of this slag," Rico said.

"You" re too good a leader."

"I'm responsible."

"You're not a god."

"I'm doing all I can do. That's my job."

That was all anyone could expect, no more, no less, and his adamant tone cut Piper short, hie he knew it would. They'd had this talk before. Rico had no illusions about his capabilities. He couldn't know how things would turn out. He couldn't see into the future to discover how they were being used- if they were being used-or how L. Kahn or somebody else might be planning to betray them. Rico's job was to see that they came outta this alive, the whole team, and Piper especially. That made it hard to sleep or rest, to do anything but worry about what was coming next.

"I'm gonna check around a minute."

"You need rest, jefe."

"This won't take long."

A moment to pull on his pants, another to pick up the Predator 2 lying on the table beside the bed. A few more to do what he needed to do. He stepped across the hall to the second bedroom. Surikov was in there, asleep, stretched out on a mattress. He looked okay. Dok said he'd survived the bustout in good shape. A little tired, a little over-excited, but no worse for the wear. Dok and Filly had the room to the right, at the end of the hall. They looked okay, too. No lights anywhere. That was standard. Rico moved up the hall to the main room. Shank stood at one of the windows overlooking Mott Street. He held the butt-end of an M22A2 braced against his hip. Thorvin stood at one of the rear windows with an SMG. Bandit sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor.

"How's it scanning?" Rico asked.

"Wiz, boss," Shank answered.

Thorvin grunted and nodded.

Rico paused in front of Bandit. The shaman's eyes were open and staring straight ahead. "Something in the air," Bandit said. "Feels bad."

"Like trouble?" Rico asked.

Bandit looked up at him, and said, "Good bet."

The infrared-enhanced cameras in her belly pod clearly picked out the big ork standing just inside the second-floor window overlooking Mott Street and the smaller dwarfish figure by the window in the rear. For almost an hour, the pair had barely moved except to turn their heads, and that made Bobbie Jo wonder. The average gutterpunk didn't have anywhere near that kind of discipline. Most runners she'd spied on here in Newark and other plexes had the discipline of the typical rock'n roller. They were more interested in breaking out the beer and the whiskey at every opportunity. After a run like the one against Maas Intertech, most would've thrown a party, complete with bootleg chip and recreational psychochems.

A quiet voice, the words, "Good bet…" came to her over the radiolink. Probably via the listening post set up in the tenement across from the runners' hideyhole. A laser mike directed at a window. The runners seemed worried about something. Bobbie Jo could understand that. Skip Nolan's voice quietly arose. "Air One, status."

"No movement," Bobbie Jo replied. "No change." And no more banter over the radio. It had died out over the last hour or two. The team inside the Command and Control vehicle was tired. So was Skip. She could hear it in his voice. Bobbie Jo was feeling a little worn herself. The runners had slept most of the day prior to their run against Maas Intertech and were sleeping in turns right now. The units of the Executive Action Brigade had been working fourteen-hour shifts since the beginning, since picking up the runners at that yakuza bar, Chimpira. Now only Colonel Yates seemed to have an excess of energy and that was because tailing the runners had changed from a silicon glide into serious biz. The runners had gear they weren't supposed to have. The chopper they'd used to get out of the Maas Intertech facility hadn't been so wiz, just ordinary radar, but the van, that gray and black phantom, it had presented problems. The dwarf rigger who did the team's driving and probably most of its repairs had the van outfitted with some kind of wild military-grade sensor gear. Getting the equipment to sleaze it had cost the Executive Action Brigade a few more nuyen than Colonel Yates had been prepared to spend.

Bobbie Jo could still hear the man cursing, cursing everybody, especially the runners and the Brigade's current client "If those scummers pull any more crap, we'll ice 'em! We'll ice 'em all!"

Talk like that worried her.

Icing the runners would be murder pure and simple, and, if nothing else, in direct violation of their orders, their contract with the client. That would make everything they'd done so far a waste of time and effort. They'd forfeit their contract and any money they had coining, and the Brigade's rep would slip a few more notches. Bobbie Jo didn't think the Brigade could afford it.

Abruptly, her ground-based combat comp went into active mode. Targeting indicators began winking in front of her eyes. She felt a shock of surprise strike straight into her gut as apparently random movements below her suddenly resolved into the semblance of a pattern.

She saw matched sets of vehicles, dark blue sedans with vans, moving rapidly along the streets that bracketed Mott Street If she read their movements correctly, all those vehicles would arrive at opposite ends of Mott Street at almost the same instant. She broadcast her alert signal. Even as her squeal hit the air, two dark-clad figures appeared on the roofs of buildings facing the runners' Mott Street hideyhole. Those figures moved toward the front of the roofs as if to take up sniping positions. Focusing her lenses and zooming in, Bobbie Jo saw that one of the figures wore a dark uniform with shoulder flash that included the likeness of a black ape.

What the hell was going on?

Ground teams reported more movements, furtive movements through back alleys, uniformed persons with automatic weapons taking up positions.

This was crazy. It suddenly looked like a commandostyle raid was about to hit the runners' hideyhole, right here in the middle of Newark's Sector 2. It didn't seem possible. Yet now she heard Skip firing off orders to Brigade units on the ground, declaring toe approaching vehicles hostiles, and then she saw the big bay door at the front of the runners' hideyhole rolling up.